Comments

How is the deceased harmed if a non-family member takes out and pays for a life insurance policy on them? It certainly did not hasten their death. No employees were harmed in the making of this policy. Also, did you notice they stopped buying the policies because they were losing money on the deal?

Question #2 is: Does this mean you will never ever ever step foot in a Wal-Mart again?

Question 1: Does it matter?Question 2: I have been twice in the past three years. Once was for work and unavoidable. The other was a moral slip-up. It was 11 pm on a Sunday night, I had just moved all my stuff in when I realized I lacked a shower rod. Rather than showering and getting water everywhere, as I should have done, I bought a shower rod at Wal-Mart

#1I think it does matter. We can probably assume that Wal-Mart management was just doing this because they thought it was a legal way to reduce their taxes. But even the hint that they could make money off their employee's premature deaths is pretty foul. Can we be certain that no ambitious junior executive ever thought in passing that, say, cutting back on employee health benefits could lead to some nice insurance payouts?

And the fact that they did it without telling the employees makes their motives much more suspicious. I know if I found out that someone had taken out a life insurance policy on me without telling me, I'd be inclined to mistrust them.

I'm also skeptical of their claimed reasons for stopping the policy. Maybe "losing money on the deal" means "We were looking like heartless ghouls, which cuts into our corporate reputation and customer base".